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Forgotten workers try to recover funds from Mexican government
WAPATO — Miguel Torres leans over the kitchen table at his son's house,
where he's been staying since his house burned two weeks ago. He spreads
thick calloused hands across the photocopies that he knows can't bring
him justice -- or the $3,500 of wages withheld so many years ago.
It's the original contracts that this 66-year-old needs to prove he once
participated in a federal program that brought some 2.5 million Mexicans
to the United States between World War II and the Vietnam War.
"Maybe they got lost in the fire, maybe they're in Mexico," says Torres,
one of perhaps 150 men in the Yakima Valley now in the claims process.
"I know I had the originals somewhere, but what's there to do now? It's
over."
The story of this man with lines etched deep into his face is one of
adventure, humiliation and sacrifice, one he recounts with charged
pauses but without regrets.
Torres was 19 when he became a "bracero," the term used for manual
laborers who came from Mexico to alleviate American worker shortages on
railroads and farms between 1942 and 1964. It comes from "brazo," which
translates into "arm" in Spanish.
But it was the hands that mattered most during the selection process.
"If you didn't have callouses, that meant you didn't know how to work
the fields, and you weren't picked," said Torres, who remembers
gathering with other workers in Empalme, a city in northern Mexico about
600 miles from his hometown in the Jalisco state.
Torres, like his father two decades before him, traveled there with
hopes of getting chosen, of bringing home dollars.
"We'd stand in this circle and they'd strip us naked to examine our
bodies, our hands. They were looking for the strongest workers," Torres
said.
It was in the early 1960s, during the last years of the bracero program,
that Torres was chosen to pick sugar beets at a Colorado farm. In three
later seasons he would return there and to California to pick tomatoes,
lettuce and oranges.
During WWII, his father, José, had worked as a bracero for Central
Washington's railroad industry. He returned to Mexico permanently after
many years as a temporary worker here.
It is unclear how many braceros came to the Valley, how many stayed in
the area and how many are still alive, said Daniel Morfín, a former farm
worker himself who coordinates local ex-braceros' claims with the
Mexican government.
Back then, few really knew much about the 10 percent of their weekly pay
that was withheld, funneled away into Mexican banks and supposedly
growing into their own retirement pots.
For many braceros — often uneducated, rural and poor — the simple act of
being here was a dream. The men were living romantic adventures they
could later spin to the younger generations back home. Braceros gave
birth to that fantasy of coming north, to "El Norte."
Torres worked hard days under the sun, happy to earn hourly wages of $1
to $5. He set some money aside to marry the girl he'd been eyeing back
home. He'd buy her a house one day. Ramona would have new plates in her
kitchen.
The program ended. Years passed. Life happened. The Torres family one
day settled, legally, in this Valley. And the bracero story was somewhat
forgotten in the ensuing decades.
But as these men grew older, some spoke up about that withheld pay, that
money they never collected. They held protests and filed lawsuits
against the Mexican government.
Many braceros died before seeing results. Torres' father, José, was one
of them. He died in Mexico in 2006 at the age of 93.
Recently, the Mexican government agreed to pay ex-braceros a one-time
sum of about $3,500 -- an amount many braceros say is far below their
due. It's been a long, complicated settlement process with staggered
deadlines and different rules for men living in the States, for those
lacking their original contracts.
"It's so confusing," said Morfín, who encourages some to travel to
Mexico to file their claims. "We've been fighting for 10 years for these
men to get paid for their sacrifice here. If the government was more
fair, it wouldn't put all these obstacles in the way."
The obstacles are too much for Torres, too much for a settlement that he
doesn't even believe will materialize.
He can't travel to Mexico, anyway. Not now, just two weeks after the
house he bought 20 years ago for his family in Wapato was destroyed in
an accidental fire.
"Those original contracts could have been in here," Torres said, walking
up damaged stairs there recently. He and his wife are staying three
blocks away with one of their children. "I can't worry about it now."
His son, Miguel Jr., 38, still listens respectfully to the old stories,
much as he did as a child.
"It's like they're waiting for all these old men to die off, one by
one," the younger Torres says. "My grandpa already died without touching
a nickel of that money."
The ex-bracero grows silent in memory, using those calloused hands to
wipe the warm liquid forming on his face.
"Even if I don't get that money I can't regret anything. It was for
them," he finally says, nodding toward his wife and son. "I have what
matters."
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